


Rose-Colored Glass

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [16]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Drabble, F/F, I guess background Hilda?, Vignettes, but maybe it's worse to live, gronder field feels, lots of people die, straight up angst sorry, wild but it's about her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25501198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: Lysithea didn't open the bottle of perfume until after the war began.Written for the Felannie discord drabble challenge; this week's prompt was "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder."
Relationships: Hilda Valentine Goneril/Lysithea von Ordelia
Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649380
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	Rose-Colored Glass

Hilda gave Lysithea the bottle of perfume for her birthday.

“Well, you liked mine so much,” she said. “You might as well have your own, then you don’t have to borrow mine all the time.”

Lysithea didn’t borrow Hilda’s perfume all the time. She didn’t wear perfume. The gift sat unopened on her bedside table. But she liked the way the bottle caught the light, sharp edges glinting rose at sunset. She didn’t need to open the bottle to remember Hilda’s laughter and smiles and careless, perfect sophistication. Not when Hilda was there.

It was the first thing she packed when she left Garreg Mach.

***

She used it more, once the war started.

Claude’s army doesn’t need another general, her father told her. It’s dangerous; the Alliance is divided; it’s too early to choose sides. You’ll stay home.

Lysithea locked herself in her room and sprayed two spritzes of perfume on her books and imagined Hilda falling asleep in lecture as she turned the pages.

Another doctor is here, mother told her. A good one, from the Empire. He wants to talk to you.

Lysithea changed into a new dress after the appointment. She sprayed perfume on the collar and remembered Hilda lacing up the back before the ball.

Masked men spotted in western Fodlan, her father whispered to her mother when they thought she was asleep. Dark robes. It’s impossible to say who they work for, or who they work with.

Lysithea dabbed perfume on the insides of her wrists, then ran her fingers from wrist to inner elbow. She threw her arm across her face, stuffed her fist against her mouth to muffle the screams, and if Hilda had been beside her, she would have told her not to worry. Hilda never worried.

The perfume bottle stayed practically full. It looked barely used. Lysithea was nothing if not judicious.

***

It was nearly impossible to find out who died on Grondor Field. The news came to her in bits and pieces all spring. It was an unending horror, piecing together the death count. The ones she didn’t know for sure, she pretended were alive. It was easier that way.

Holst wrote to her personally. Otherwise she would have pretended.

“My sister always spoke highly of you. She thought so much of you,” he wrote. His handwriting was so much neater, so much more precise. “I know she would have wanted you to hear of this loss, so unspeakable, from a friend.”

Her father didn’t stop her as she ran up the stairs. Her mother didn’t follow when she slammed her bedroom door.

Lysithea grabbed at the bottle of perfume wildly, desperately. The stopper smashed to pieces as she dropped it to the floor. She poured the perfume on her desk, on her bed, along the windowsill. She ruined the pages of her dark magic tomes; the ink ran together, sticky with the scent of lilacs and vanilla. She upturned the bottle and the last drops ran down her arms. She expected it to be pink, blood washed with water until it was not longer blood. It was clear, and she could barely see it. The rose-tinted glass had tricked her.

The smell was overpowering. It was everywhere, grotesque and chemical. Lysithea breathed deeply; she couldn’t get enough of it   


Eventually, she could no longer smell it. Eventually, she fell asleep.

She heard Hilda laughing in her dreams, but she was always too far away to catch.

**Author's Note:**

> Eyyy, you know what they say - when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags!
> 
> I can only keep drabbles under 600 words if they're sad, I guess. Angst but make it Brechtian.
> 
> [I'm on twitter if you want to come say hi.](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


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